Beyond Binary

by Brit Mandelo

  I stayed on my feet but I was losing too much blood.

  “Not sure about that,” I said, “But your security is. Should have beefed it up when you moved out here.”

  A smile. “You weren’t expecting me to be on my feet.”

  “Might be for the best,” I said. “Since I can’t carry you out like this.”

  He laughed. “Chris, Chris, Chris,” he said. “If I were willing to let you take me alive, would you really be happy?”

  “Sure I would,” I said. “I’m sick of being poor.” I shuddered, cold suddenly, my head swimming.

  I pulled myself the last step to the top of the escalator, my legs feeling like large cooked noodles. If he’d been just like the other bones, dead to the world in a hospital bed, I could have made it. But now that I finally saw Cameron Trexell in the flesh, I could see that he never plugged in permanently. Never had. Never would. His devotees had. I had.

  I lowered the gun, put the safety on.

  “Have things been fixed, in your wild attempt to wake people up? To make them see the world as you do? How many of them turned around and plugged back in, escaped their flesh and blood bodies?”

  I leaned on the escalator rail, leaving a bloody smudge on the stainless steel surface. “Some of them stayed out.”

  He took a step toward me and I forced myself to level the gun at him again, even if the safety was still on. My arm felt like it was made out of iron, too heavy to hold up. “How many of them, even if they stayed out of the ’Net, fixed what you wanted fixed? How many of them got worthless jobs just to survive like you did?”

  All of them.

  Somewhere far off, I caught the scent of oranges, that bonehouse smell. Trexell himself may not be plugged in permanently, but somebody was around here.

  He took another step. “Put down the gun, Chris. You’re dying, and you gain nothing if either of us bites it.”

  I remembered waking up in the bonehouse dark, disconnected back into the flesh of my body, feeling it again. Bones aching. Atrophied muscles useless. Sobbing from the pain of badly used nerve endings while I waited for the ’Net connection to come back. Wanting nothing but to go back in, to feel the pain melt away, to have the body sense of myself as male jacked back into my brain. The bonehouse cat, a skinny black slip of a kitten, curled up by my shoulder, purring insistently, as though it could make me stop hurting through sheer force of will.

  I still craved it, stronger than any drug. It was a million times worse now than the simple pang I felt performing an eviction. Even remembering the moments of intense pain, I wanted it. Needed it.

  “Anyone I save from you is worth it for that alone,” I said.

  Another step toward me, his feet scuffing in the ash. The gun was only pointed at his feet, I couldn’t sustain holding it any higher than that. “You don’t want to stop us,” he said. “We’re showing the world that the Northern Coalition is no different from any other set of rulers in the past. Convincing them they must put aside their complacency and rise up.”

  I thought about the riots.

  How many people did he have in his makeshift bonehouse? How many did he hold in other bonehouses across the country? “You never were Sammy Gauge, were you?”

  “Of course not, although he was one of my best,” he said. “He and I had too much in common, if you found us.”

  He took another step. He asked, “Do you remember when you used to have an effect on the world, instead of simply taking money to rearrange other people’s lives? I don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t want to come back. This world isn’t getting any better, is it?”

  Every year, another disaster.

  “You’d take me back just like that,” I said. Twenty minutes and I’d be in. This time, there’d be no David to pay for my eviction.

  “Just like that,” he said.

  I brought the gun up again, leaning on the escalator rail with my hip and using both hands to aim. I hit him twice, once in each leg. I hadn’t aimed to kill, though at that moment I’m not sure I would have minded if I did.

  He went down, screaming, cursing, and I dropped the gun, afraid he’d get it from me if I brought it nearer to him.

  “There’s more at stake here,” he yelled at me, clutching one shin in both hands, even though it was bleeding just the same as the other. His gray pants gone a dark, bloody red.

  “I know,” I said, and then I got the tranquilizer into him.

  The mall was silent again, except for the sound of my breathing and a cat mewling somewhere far off. I crawled over to where I’d left the gun and cradled it, watching for anyone coming out of the hallways or up the escalator.

  The screen of my phone was cracked, but it still worked. I sent out my SOS call, with my GPS location. Told them to bring first aid resources and enough people to take care of Trexell’s illegal bonehouse.

  Jealous congratulations started pouring in, but I ignored the messages.

  I watched the reflections of dark clouds in the mirrored surfaces of skyscrapers. I wondered if I’d won.

  ∞

  Sex with Ghosts

  Sarah Kanning

  It was a typical Friday at work; my day started with a first-timer interview. He sank into the black leather and chrome armchair, one hand gripping the other nervously as if to remind himself to touch nothing.

  “Tell me about your firm’s sanitary procedures.”

  Great. A germophobe. “Nothing’s safer, Mr. Smith. The flesh of the bot itself is made of antimicrobial material, prepared before each session the way surgical instruments are cleaned.”

  They were all Mr. Smith; the only difference was the account number on the billing information. He’d given us that over the phone, a requirement to get in the door. A large enough credit line guarantees privacy at a place like the Boutique.

  “Autoclaved?” A dew of perspiration anointed his upper lip.

  “Cleaned ultrasonically, then treated with a combination of chemicals, UV light, and heat, and finally rinsed in distilled water.”

  He seemed to relax marginally.

  “Would you like to review the templates now?”

  Design a date: that was everybody’s favorite part—or at least, everybody’s favorite of the parts of the process that I saw.

  You’d think there would be infinite variety in a place like this, where you can have sex with whomever or whatever you want, and there are a few truly strange requests that come in, but mostly it’s the same sad old kinks.

  Sex with famous people, living and dead. The star fuckers are the easiest to deal with, because they mostly have no idea what sex would actually be like with that particular famous person.

  Sex with the ex. Sex with several of the exes. Sex with Catherine and her horse. Sex with the dearly departed—that always gets me down; people leave looking so bleak. Sex between two sex bots while the paying customer watches. Sex with a hermaphrodite. Sex with a famous person while the ex watches. Revenge sex. Greed sex. Closeted sex. Lots and lots of illicit and morally questionable sex.

  Lots of nervous practice sex, trying out the moves before the big prom date or wedding night. Lots of sad and lonely sex. None of it real, all of it sex with ghosts.

  I shepherded Mr. Smith through the design process, then sent him off with an appointment card and a dazed expression.

  Jones must have thought it the height of wit to hire me, but it worked out well; to have anyone but an asexual in a job like “bot sex parlor interviewer/order-taker” would be inviting trouble in and putting it on the payroll. And a youngish woman with better than average looks and a deep well of patience and tolerance is a good fit for a job that entails asking paying customers to reveal their deepest sexual fantasies. Or at least the fantasies they would like fulfilled at this particular time.

  For me, the choice was simple; it’s expensive to live in Chicago, and glorified receptionist work anyplace else in the metro area would have paid about a third of what Jones offered. “Some girls aren’t comfortab
le with this type of business,” he had explained, shrugging. “But all I want from you is what’s on the job description.”

  So it mostly worked out. My utter lack of interest in sex does seem to bring out the puckishness in some of the techs, however—especially Bill, the principal programmer. He’s continually sending out new bots to try to tempt my nonexistent libido. His latest angle was literary figures, since he found out I majored in British literature in college.

  “Miss Bingham, how delightful to see you!” His green carnation was a dead giveaway, even if I hadn’t recognized the swoopy hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and general air of dissipation.

  “Mr. Wilde, what an unexpected pleasure.” I let him kiss my hand, and he lingered over it an extra moment, stroking my skin with his thumb. I suppose it’s silly to try to be polite to a bot, since they preserve no memories after being repurposed, and wouldn’t take offense even if they did, but still. Oscar Wilde.

  “Fancy a shag, my dear?”

  “A shag, Mr. Wilde? Isn’t that a bit anachronistic of you? And aren’t I bit out of your line?”

  “Well, a man must keep up with the times. And be open to new possibilities. Constance never complained, at any rate.” He perched next to me on my desk chair, leaning in. I could feel the warmth of his body, his ribcage expanding as he breathed. The bots are quite realistic. “How about it? You know, the best way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it.”

  “Yes, I seem to recall you saying that before.” I rolled the chair a bit, throwing his weight off balance and causing him to rise. “But I’m afraid I could only give my heart—or anything else,” I hastily amended, “to someone with strong moral character. And of course he’d have to be an early riser.”

  He recoiled in mock horror. “An early riser! Might as well ask someone to be brilliant at breakfast, and”—I helped him finish the phrase—“only tiresome people are brilliant at breakfast.”

  Unabashed, he tried a few more chestnuts out on me and trotted off again. Is that the best you can do? I messaged to Bill. Not even that amusing.

  Be nice, Carla, he sent back, or I’ll send out an Anthony Trollope clone with enormous white muttonchop whiskers.

  I didn’t think there could be much demand for Trollope, but I’ve certainly been proven wrong before. Bill was good; his Shakespeare was downright convivial, and could make you a proper cup of tea after a tumble. (I’ve sampled the former, not the latter.) I’m not sure how historically accurate that is, but it’s a skill I can get behind. All the bots have built-in chess engines, but how sexy is that? I mean, how many people want to boff Bobby Fischer? (Answer: two, within the last seventeen months, in the Boutique’s North American franchises.)

  The next guy to come in seemed more nervous than the first guy, and got more nervous the minute he saw me. Strange.

  I pulled up this new Mr. Smith’s financials. Wow. Our services aren’t cheap, but if he wanted to play Caligula at a Roman orgy, or quarterback of the football team getting it on with the cheerleading squad, he had enough flash to make it happen. Once or twice a month. There was a flag on his file, too: he was a frequent customer. He seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn’t recall working with him directly before.

  I started to feel him out—metaphorically speaking, of course—and he got shy. Not unusual.

  “I want to talk to someone else.” His gaze slid off me and fell to the floor. I felt like it had left a trail of slime on me.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, are you unhappy with me for some reason?” I keyed in the code for a switchout.

  “No, heavens no.” He stammered a bit and wouldn’t meet my eyes. His scalp glistened under thinning hair. “I just—I’m not comfortable talking about this particular, uh, order with you.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones will be happy to continue your consultation.” Consultation was the agreed-upon neutral term. Vaguely medical, or businesslike. Jones appeared, grinning like a shark, and cut in smoothly.

  “Mr. Smith! A pleasure to see you again.” He threw me a get lost look and I lost no time getting. Time for my lunch break, anyway.

  Long past lunch and five consultations later (a couple of star fuckers, a re-creation of prom night, a widower looking for one last snuggle—poor bastard—with his wife, and a twosome looking to become a three- or foursome), I was ready to get home and hit the shower.

  Sex. All those complications, all that messiness. It’s like watching a group of enthusiasts really get into a hobby that you don’t share. I mean, I don’t understand the attraction of online gaming, either, but people spend their lives in that pursuit, too. I realize there’s the whole propagation of the species angle to consider, but apparently I experience the phenomenon differently than most.

  I was putting on my coat in the employee break room when I felt a presence. Not a human one. Bots must make some high-pitched whine, servomotors or something, that doesn’t register consciously, but it prickles the hair on my nape.

  “Bill, what did you send me now?” I asked wearily.

  “Bill didn’t send me.” A woman’s voice.

  The voice was…. I knew that voice. “He would of course program you to say that.”

  “Oh, don’t ruin the mood. Come on.”

  I turned around, got a good look at her—it. Me. My own face. Then I stormed past her to the programmers’ cubicles.

  “Bill, I am going to kick your ass from here to Cleveland!” I was shouting and running into things, knocking over the delicate fabrication instruments, the programming rigs. Techs scrambled to get out of my way.

  He was cowering when I got there, cornered in his beige work area, eyeing the five-foot cube walls as if he might try some impromptu high jumping.

  “It wasn’t my idea to make her,” he said, stammering a bit under my white-hot glare. “Jones signed the work order.”

  “And you just nodded and started scrolling through my security footage?”

  “Listen, she wasn’t even built here. We shipped the specs to Baltimore, and—”

  “Baltimore? My sex stunt double has been screwed by the Baltimore office?”

  Realizing he was just digging himself deeper, he fell silent. The beginning of wisdom.

  “Clarkson, I am going to ask one question, and you are going to answer it. Truthfully.” I glared at him and he managed to meet my eye for a fraction of a second. “Why did Jones want to make a sex bot with my face on it?”

  Bill fidgeted and licked his lips. “He said, uh, he said, there were requests.”

  “We don’t have to honor every request, do we?”

  A mellow baritone cut through the tension in the cubicle. “C’mon, Carla. You know we’d double-bill Elvis and Mother Teresa gettin’ it on for these jokers. And have.”

  “Jones.” My employer. I whirled, rage searing through me. “This is different. I have to work here. Elvis and Mother Teresa don’t. I don’t want these creeps coming in here, thinking they’ll get a piece of me, leering at me—”

  “They do that now.” His seamed, suntanned face was serene as a Buddha’s.

  “But there’s a line, damn it! A line they shouldn’t be able to cross.”

  “Carla. Our business is crossing lines.” He gave me a cool, evaluating look. “Come on.”

  I knew where the playrooms were, but hadn’t set foot in one since my orientation—despite the generous employee discounts. At the moment, one was set up like a locker room, another as a shoe store. Jones led me to a third door and opened it, waving me inside. I stepped through the door.

  I was looking at the reception area where I meet with clients. No, not an exact replica. The chair was much more padded, and the desk was as large as a twin bed.

  “You’re actually fairly popular at the moment.” Jones gave a small shrug. “Among a certain set of our clientele.”

  “The switchout with Mr. Smith?”

  Jones inclined his head. “Although I don’t know what possessed him to send that bot out to you. I assure you it wou
ldn’t have been Bill’s idea—he’s been against this from the start.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking great.” I fought with my gorge and won, temporarily at least.

  “I had hoped you would understand, Carla.”

  “No, you didn’t, or you would have told me first.” My vision blurred and went red around the edges. “You would have asked me.”

  “I—”

  “Just save it, Jones. Save it for the paying customers.”

  I was out the door. Jones didn’t follow me. Bill was hiding somewhere, which was fine. I didn’t need to see him, either.

  I didn’t think too much about what I was going to do until I saw her again, standing in the corridor by the back door. She was wearing a wool skirt, black tights, a black tank top, and a cardigan—what I would wear, only shorter, smaller, tighter, and sluttier. I threw my coat at her. It.

  “Put that on. We’re going out.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed out, but we could go back to one of the rooms and—”

  Shit. Built-in security protocols. Anti-theft insurance. I returned to Bill’s cubicle (he had already fled), grabbed a programming rig, turned it on, and switched it to Simple Voice Command.

  “Open the door and get out.”

  She—it—obeyed, and I followed, clipping the rig to my belt. What is it with programmers and little plastic boxes with belt clips?

  “The white car. Get in the passenger side.”

  I drove five miles to a convenience store parking lot.

  “Lean forward and pull your hair away from your neck.”

  “Glad to.” The two words in her mouth somehow held infinite erotic promise.

  “Shut up. We’re just going to do a bit of minor surgery here. It won’t hurt a bit.”

  I didn’t actually care if it did. The GPS unit was in a port under the hairline at the nape of her neck—hard to find unless you knew what to look for. Luckily, Boutique designers firmly believe in plug-and-play. I dumped the chip in the back of a pickup with Tennessee plates. With any luck, it would buy me time to get away.